But whenever he thought of going back to his old existence, the idea of not having Livvy, of not being able to hold her ever again, was enough to shore up his determination. He could do this. He had to do it. Once he held her in his arms again, everything would have been worth it. So he kept looking forward. Keeping his eyes on the prize.
Since Roys’ plan called for inserting him in the lineage of his last ancestor, (or would that be a successor?), they had traveled to 1983. The last duke had been the right age to be his father. Roys created a marriage certificate for him and a birth record for him dated a year later. A few years later, they also created school records. They had to make him an orphan who was raised in the public welfare system. With the superior technology and skills Roys had, it wasn’t difficult for him to hack into the public records system and create the paper trail. But it took quite a lot of traveling, both in time and space.
Then there was the matter of making money. The next stop was the year Dale was supposed to turn 18. They sold some valuable jewelry pieces and gold coins he had brought to different pawn shops. The proceeds from the sale, which he had found to be quite adequate, but Roys had scoffed at, they had invested in the stock market.
At least this he knew how to do. Although he had to learn new ways of doing it, at least the investing part he understood. With Roys’s knowledge of the future, it was easy to choose the investments that would multiply his money the most, and by this point in time, he was quite rich. He might know less than a child about how things worked in this new world, but at least he wouldn’t be a financial burden on Livvy.
Using part of that fortune, he bought a townhouse in London. Roys said they needed to establish an address for him and the townhouse was a fantastic investment as the price would multiply in the coming years. It also helped with the time traveling part, having a secure and private place from which to travel. Until that point, they had been using isolated and abandoned places, but even that was risky.
Everything was falling into place. Now he only needed to get back to her.
***
ONE MORE STOP. DALEthought as he looked out the window of his townhouse at the moonlit park across the street. They only needed to make one more stop, and then they could finally go to Livvy. Anxiety gripped him. The timeline was muddled, but by his calculations, it had been almost a month of jumping through time and fabricating a whole life out of thin air.
It was strange to think that for a while now, during this trip, he had been alive at the same time as Livvy. He ached to call her. It would be so easy to do using these phone apparatuses. To hear her voice, tell her he was here. That he was coming to be with her.
He heard Roys enter the room and turned to face him. “Do you think I could call Olivia or send her a message?”
Roys was horrified at the prospect. “Absolutely not. You can’t contact her yet.”
“Just to let her know I’m coming.”
Roys carefully placed the equipment he carried on top of the dining table. That and two chairs were the only furniture in the townhouse, besides their beds upstairs.
“Dale, listen to me. At this moment in time, she doesn’t even know you exist. If you call her, she is going to think you are a lunatic.”
“Damn! You are right, of course.” Dale dropped onto one of the chairs and placed his elbows on the table. “I should be able to realize that. But it is so frustrating to know that I’m now living at the same time as her and yet I still can’t reach her.”
“Patience. You will be able to see her in a few day’s time.” Roys pushed one of the LT’s in his direction, “In the meantime, why don’t you google her, if you miss her so much?”
Dale narrowed his eyes at Roys’s laughing face. “If that is a euphemism for something improper, I don’t appreciate your—”
“No, no.” Roys laughed and waved his hands in a placating motion. “Settle down. Googling something or someone in these times means searching them up on the internet. Here, let me show you.” He said, taking a seat next to Dale.
And Roys had taught him about the Internet and how to use a computer. It was all so fascinating. This internet thing was almost like an oracle, or maybe like a never ending library of infinite knowledge. He could search for anything, even people. And he had that information available anywhere, anytime, thanks to the phone he had acquired. He had been somewhat familiar with phones from seeing Olivia’s, but it was amazing to discover all the other things it could do.
He had taken to looking Olivia up, and he had found a couple of articles that mentioned her in relation to the different projects she had worked on with her ex-husband’s company.
When he discovered social media, he started following her there too, absorbing every picture, every word she wrote, every place she went, everything she did. Roys laughed at him and called him a cyber-stalker. He didn’t care, couldn’t help it. He needed to know about her life.
Even when that meant seeing countless pictures of her with her ex-husband. Except he wasn’t her ex-husband yet. In many of the pictures, he appeared next to her. His arms around her, his hands on her waist or her hip, their faces together. They were even kissing in one picture!
Dale had to look away. It was like a cannonball to his gut. His mouth twisted with disgust while his hands had curled into fists. He wanted to reach through the screen and strangle the bastard. He wanted to smash his smug face in and demand that he take his hands off Olivia.
This jealousy was unexpected. He knew it was nonsensical. She had told him about her past. But somehow, seeing her next to her not-yet-ex-husband did something to his insides. This time-traveling business was messing with his brain. He couldn’t tell the past from the present or future anymore. All he knew was that at this moment in time, Olivia was still married to another man. While he slept alone in this cold, almost empty house, she was sleeping next to him and... he stopped himself before he started thinking of them being intimate. If he dwelled on that, he would go stark raving mad.
So he avoided her pictures with him, focusing instead on the ones with her family. And what a beautiful family it was. Even through the pictures, you could sense this was a group of people bound by something more than blood ties.
One photo in particular haunted him. It was of Livvy and her sister. Livvy was holding her newborn niece, and her sister had an arm around her, her head resting on Livvy’s shoulder. Leah was so young, and she looked so happy. She was looking at her newborn daughter with such wonder and love. To think that less than two years after that, she would be dead. He closed his eyes. It was so wrong.
Tragedy would shatter this beautiful and loving family who looked so happy, and he knew it. He felt he had to do something about it. Prevent it if he could. He knew Roys wouldn’t like the idea and would probably outright refuse. So he had to be careful in bringing it up.
What was the date of her death? He couldn’t remember exactly, but one day Olivia had mentioned that it was the anniversary of her sister’s death. He thought it was November, four years prior in her time. So they needed to travel a bit past the date and find out how it happened and where so they could prevent it.
Yes, it was the right thing to do. Now he only needed to convince Roys.
